Tuesday, 30 September 2014

The battle is still going on about Gaza casualty figures
during the recent fifty day conflict between Palestinian terrorism led by
Hamas, and Israel.

Israel detractors are still using slogans, purportedly based
on Gaza casualty figures, to bash Israel. We heard it spouted by Mahmoud Abbas
at the UN podium. We confront it on campus, in meetings, and on the social
media. It simply won’t go away. The
fraud keeps churning off the conveyor belt of lies.

During the conflict and after, I extensively researched and
reviewed casualty figures with a view to checking media and propaganda claims
that the majority of casualty figures were civilian, mainly women and children.

I refused to use Israeli-based statistics. Instead, I logged
in to figures put out by the Ministry of Health in Gaza. This is hardly a
Zionist organization. On the contrary, it is a Hamas-controlled bureaucracy.

At the outset of the conflict they published daily listings
of casualties giving names, ages, and where they were killed. Later, they
revised their reports by not giving names and locations but simply groupings
such as children, females, and elderly.
It is interesting to note that their children’s group included people up
to the age of 18.

It is worth noting that some of the Palestinian terrorists
killed or captured by Israel’s IDF were younger than eighteen. One terrorist, caught
as he came out of a terror attack tunnel inside Israel, was aged 16. Obeida
Fadhel Mohammad Abu Hweishel, was listed by the Palestinian Health
Ministry as aged 24 to hide the fact that this nine-year-old was exploited by
his uncle, Adel Mohammad Abu Hweishel, as part of his
jihad activities as commander of the Hamas rocket firing network in the
Nuseirat refugee camp.

Hamas buried nine-year-old Obeida wearing the headband
and shroud of the Izz-a-din-al-Qassam Brigade.

In its attempt at concealment Hamas listed a number of
terrorist men as children. One, listed as a 13 year old boy, was 26 year old
Fatah terrorist, Ibrahim Jamal Kamal Nasr, killed at Khan Yunis on July 18. So
the Gazan Ministry of Health children’s casualty group should be taken with skepticism.

My findings throughout the research clearly showed the
majority of casualties to be men of fighting age. Clearly, not all men of
fighting age were terrorists but they constituted a majority of over 56% of
known casualties, and not the women or children.

Out of a total of 2130, less than a thousand were children,
women, or elderly.

My findings are being confirmed by the slow, methodical,
work being undertaken by the Meir Amit Intelligence & Terrorism Information
Center. As of September 22, they had
plodded through 750 names in an effort to identify and link them with a terrorist
faction in Gaza.

According to their identified people almost 50% were tied to a
terrorist group. As they research later figures I am certain that their
percentages of terrorists dead will increase to match my figures, or surpass
them, as later fighting was concentrated in areas where the civilian population
had fled.

Their final figures will echo my own in that more terrorists
were killed in Gaza than civilians, but even if the figure will be one
terrorist to one civilian this is infinitely a superior, moral, ratio than
terrorist/civilian casualty rations in other recent conflicts.

As Colonel Richard Kemp, former Commander of British Forces
in Afghanistan, told me, the ratio in his theater of conflict in Afghanistan
was three civilian deaths for every terrorist, despite the precautions taken by
British, American, and other coalition forces. In Iraq, he said, the ratio was
worse – four civilians for every terrorist. In Russia’s fight in Chechnya the
ratio was six civilians for every terrorist.

So factually, statistically, Israel’s IDF have proven to be
the most moral fighting force in military history.

Let not those, who bandy around worthless slogans, be
allowed to denigrate Israel when it comes to the fight against extremist terror
in urban warfare zones.

Barry Shaw is the consultant on delegitimization issues to
The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College. He is also the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming
the Narrative.’ www.israelnarrative.com Also available in ebook format on Amazon.